A Florida Man’s Credit Card Was Declined, So He Went To Jail

A Florida man and his friend went partying at an upscale Fort Lauderdale club, only to find himself in jail after his bank took too long to process the charges on his credit card.

Don Marcani and his friend Marko went to Cyn, an expensive nightclub in Fort Lauderdale, and paid for about $80 worth of drinks at the bar with Marcani’s Wells Fargo credit card, according to NBC Miami. When they decided to head for the VIP lounge, however (cost of admission: $600), things went south.

“At the VIP section, [the waitress] took my credit card, took my ID, brought the bottle service out and after a while, she came back out and she told me, ‘Your credit card is declined,’ and I said, ‘that’s impossible.'”

Marcani said he then tried to pay the bill with a different credit card, and it, too, was declined.

“The club manager called my bank and gave me the phone to talk to the bank and that’s when the cop interfered and I think he said, ‘I’m tired of this sh*t. We even told them, walk us, escort us to the ATM machine.”

Instead, he was taken to jail and charged with grand theft. Ironically, while he was behind bars at the Broward County Jail, his credit card company sent him an email asking if he’d like to verify the $600 charge at the club, according to Ars Technica. Since he was in jail at the time and didn’t have access to his cell phone, he of course couldn’t respond to the email.

Even more ironically, he was able to post $1,000 bond the next morning… using the same Wells Fargo credit card that caused all of his trouble in the first place.

“It wasn’t accepted at the nightclub, but I used that credit card to get out of jail.”

Marcani’s lawyer, David Edelstein, said that his client’s credit card problems could happen to anyone.

“I think we are all used to getting those emails from credit card companies saying, ‘Hey, did you authorize this charge?’ Now, we have to worry about getting arrested for using our own credit card.”

Ars Technica writer Megan Guess writes that Mr. Marcani’s credit card problems likely resulted from the decades-old magnetic stripe technology used in American credit cards, and banks’ diligence in preventing fraud. Several high-profile credit card hacking incidents — most recently Kmart, according to this Inquisitr report — have created credit card nightmares for millions of Americans and the banks that issued their cards.

The moral of Mr. Marcani’s tale is simple: If you’re going to pay a several-hundred-dollar bar tab with your credit card, make sure you’ve discussed it with your bank first.